Editorialising” Open Access Scientific Journals
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Critical study of the new ways of “editorialising” open access scientific journals Synthesised report of the study piloted by BSN 4 and BSN 7 Produced by Pierre-Carl Langlais (June 2016) Steering committee: Serge Bauin, Emmanuelle Corne, Jacques Lafait, Pierre Mounier Introduction As this report goes to press, France has just adopted an open access law. Article 30 of the “Law for a Digital Republic” provides that the authors of scientific texts whose work is at least 50% publicly funded may “make [it] freely available in an open format, through digital means” after a period of restricted access (known as an “embargo” period) lasting no longer than six months in the technical and medical sciences, and twelve months in the humanities and social sciences. In September 2016, this measure was definitively approved by the National Assembly and the Senate. It aims to remove one of the main restrictions limiting the dissemination of scientific publications on digital networks: the need to obtain the publisher‟s authorisation. The exclusivity clauses typically included in publishing contracts potentially prevent authors from re-disseminating their scientific contributions (for example, in an institutional repository) or else apply varying restrictions.1 These complex arrangements do not facilitate the implementation of a coherent open access policy, neither for authors (who must adopt a radically distinct republication strategy, depending on the publisher) nor for readers. The embedding of open access in the law creates a minimum harmonised framework capable of simplifying the conditions attached to accessing publicly funded research. The French law builds on a European, indeed global, movement. On 17 July 2012, the European Commission put forward a recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific information.2 Based on the assumption that access to publicly funded research contributes to “speed[ing up] scientific progress”, this text advocates that such research should be disseminated “as soon as possible, preferably immediately, and in any case no later than 6 months after the date of publication, and 12 months for social sciences and humanities” (Art. 1).3 Four years later, on 17 May 2016, the Council of the European Union recommending rolling out this model to all Member States in order to make open access a “default option by 2020”. 1 See the conditions listed by SHERPA/RoMEO: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/journalbrowse.php 2 Recommendation 2012/417/EU: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32012H0417 3 Council Conclusions on “the transition to an Open Science system”, http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9526-2016-INIT/en/pdf 2 Map of approved and planned open access laws In this transition from contract to law, the practice of open access entails a major redefinition of the existing business models. Scientific publishing remains overwhelmingly structured around a subscription-based distribution system, essentially targeted at libraries and scientific institutions. Several French and European reports have attempted to assess the feasibility of a conversion to open access. Odile Contat and Anne-Solweig Gremillet‟s recent study for the BSN, Publier : à quel prix ? [Publishing: At what price?], highlights the extent to which French humanities and social science journals are dependent on public funding: the “vast majority of publishers associated with journal-producing organisations are essentially publicly funded”.4 Today, the debate is moving from an assessment of the principle of open access towards a more specific discussion of the possible models. The question is no longer “Should we move to open access?”, but rather: “What type of open access do we want?” Certain major initiatives within the open access movement focus exclusively on the managerial issues involved in converting scientific publishers‟ distribution model. The twelfth conference of the Berlin Declaration organised in December 2015 by the Max Planck Gesellschaft thus led to a proposal to “flip subscription-based journals” by transferring the funds allocated to subscriptions to covering “processing costs”: 4 Odile Contat and Anne-Solweig Gremillet, “Publier : à quel prix ? Étude sur la structuration des coûts de publication pour les revues françaises en SHS”, Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication, 7, 2015, https://rfsic.revues.org/1716 3 The objective of the conference was to build a consensus for an internationally coordinated effort to shift libraries‟ journal budgets away from subscriptions and towards [an] article processing costs model for open access journals (via APCs).5 This focus on converting business models overlooks a major sticking point: the review process. Some bodies or university communities do not recognise open access publications as scientific contributions. Section 60 of the French National Council of Universities thus provides that “Articles in solely „open access‟ journals will not be taken into account”.6 Paradoxically, although the reliability of open access publications is disputed in the name of standardised review protocols, these same protocols are themselves increasingly challenged.7 Open access could thus draw its legitimacy from a potential counter-model of the review process, one that would no longer be based on the implementation of closed procedures conducted in private between publishers, authors and reviewers: “open peer review”. Remit of this report This report was initially commissioned as part of a twofold critical assessment of the new forms of open access publications and those that preceded them: what publishing forms can the state encourage in a digital age that is witnessing the transformation of scientific publishing and the failure of scientific peer review? The shift from one publication ecosystem to another not only raises a series of “challenges” (digital technology, changing publishing practices, etc.), it also brings to light pre-existing flaws that are otherwise generally hidden by the inertia of habit: the increase in the number of scientific corpuses accessible online allows for a fine-grained appraisal of the deficiencies of peer review protocols, while the overhaul of the conditions in which scientific 5 “Berlin 12 Conference Focuses on Proposal to Flip Subscription Journals to Open Access”, arl.org, http://www.arl.org/storage/documents/publications/MaxPlanckBrief-March2016-1.pdf, accessed 15 November 2016. 6 http://www.cpcnu.fr/web/section-60/conseils-generaux 7 This discourse of crisis crops up frequently in journal editorials. See, for example, A. Mulligan, “Is peer review in crisis?”, Oral Oncology, 41(2), 2005, p. 135–141, for a discussion of how the revelation of serious fraud has discredited the process (“These events have acted as a catalyst within the scholarly community, with many questioning the role of peer review”), or more recently, Gottfried Schatz, “The faces of Big Science”, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 15(6), 2014, p. 423–426, for a discussion of the negative effect of regrettably low acceptance rates (“Science needs competition, but competition has become so fierce that many fields of science now resemble war zones. Nothing illustrates this better than the current crisis of peer review”). 4 texts are brought into circulation incidentally encourages experimentation in other types of publishing activities. At this critical juncture where the established norms are becoming more fragile and the norms of the future remain vague, institutions and scientific communities find themselves in a position to influence the reconfigurations underway and encourage long-desired innovations. The principle of the reproducibility or openness of research data is not consubstantial with open access dissemination, but its institutionalisation is facilitated in a context of widespread change. The three parallel stages specified in the initial remit of this report depict an overall configuration in which the development of a public policy to incentivise certain models or practices is becoming a necessity. These are, namely, the acceleration of the process of informatisation (above and beyond formats such as the PDF, which faithfully reproduces the appearance of a print edition); the redefinition of business and publishing models (is there still a need to talk in terms of journals, or even articles?); and the critical rereading of the efficacy of review mechanisms (an issue that relates not only to peer review itself, but also to all ways in which peer review is reviewed, e.g. metrics, list of qualifying journals, etc.). What concrete forms could such an incentivising policy take? In an ecosystem as “interdependent” as digital scientific publishing, it is difficult to imagine encouraging a few innovations on a selective and exclusive basis. The term “innovation” usually refers to the delimited integration of a new product or practice in an entrepreneurial setting.8 The development of open forms of review or alternative metrics (or, in the end, the conversion to all-out open access) does not fit into this restrictive definition: it is not an isolatable “product”, but the redefinition of a fundamental aspect of an activity. The spread of open access would require less an “innovation policy” and more an “infrastructural policy”, one which, as well as supporting uses and specific tools, would go further and define the convergent linkages between mechanisms, actors and practices. A recent report from Knowledge Exchange thus recommends